Biden Administration Temporarily Backs Off Ban on Menthol Cigarettes
Civil rights groups fought the ban, saying it would target Black smokers…which may not vote for Biden in quite the same numbers as in 2020.
The Biden administration has put a lot of effort into Nanny-State the cigarettes. Since Biden began occupying the Oval Office, the Food and Drug Administration crafted rules to ban the sale of menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars, as well as proposed measures to reduce the level of nicotine in tobacco products.
The total ban has been kicked down the road, and the menthol rules are not expected to be phased in starting March 2024.
The Biden administration has once again delayed banning menthol cigarettes, infuriating officials of public health groups who say the products are responsible for taking hundreds of thousands of American lives.
On Wednesday, the White House quietly updated its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs website to reflect that any final ban on menthol wouldn’t take place until at least March. Even then, it’s expected to take years for menthol products to be off store shelves. The ban was previously supposed to take effect by the end of December.
The reason for the delay? Civil rights groups argue the ban targets blacks and hurts Biden where it counts…in the polls.
[I]n private phone calls, civil rights groups including the ACLU; the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, or NOBLE; and Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network warned the White House against the plan, with some officials suggesting that a regulatory crackdown could harm President Joe Biden’s reelection chances with Black voters.
A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivities involved, confirmed that the delay was the result of those conversations.
“It is a signal to the community that lobbied on this that we heard you and we need some more time to look at this,” the official told ABC News.
It appears the polling is quite ominous among the group that tends to be Biden’s biggest fan base. Especially among the younger ones
Biden started his presidency with an 86 percent average approval rating among Black Americans, higher than any other racial group. But by July 2022, that number was down 23 percentage points, to 63 percent. That said, his approval rating among Black Americans — unlike the other three racial groups we looked at — did mildly increase ahead of the midterm elections. But since early 2023, it has dropped again to 60 percent, the lowest his approval rating has ever been among Black Americans during his presidency.
…While younger Democrats of all races are more progressive and critical of Biden than their elders are, [Terrance Woodbury, CEO of the Democratic-aligned polling firm HIT Strategies] says he’s seen polling that shows it’s “much more concentrated among Black voters.” Part of the steep decline in young Black Americans’ approval of Biden stems from the fact that their approval started out so high — it’s “a higher bar to drop from,” as Woodbury put it. “When I sit in focus groups with young Black voters and ask what [Democrats have] done to make their lives better, they’re hard pressed to come up with an answer, despite this administration delivering on much of the Black agenda,” Woodbury said. “That’s the communication challenge that we have a year to overcome.”
Meanwhile, public health advocates are cloaking themselves in “science” to force more rules onto Americans. They are outraged by the delay.
Public health groups said based on past history, they’re worried the delay will go beyond March.
“We were expecting to see final rules in August this year. It’s now December. And so an additional delay to March certainly begs the question, how much longer are we gonna have to wait? How many times are we going to punt this?” asked Emily Holubowich, national senior vice president of federal advocacy at the American Heart Association.
“The science is clear. The rules need to be released now,” Holubowich said.
If the Biden administration had put in half the effort on border control that it did for cigarette control, we would currently be in much better shape as a nation.
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Black people are being willfully enslaved to shiny golden calves of their own construct.
Thank, God that my holiday gift basket for my special black friends is not endangered this year. I include a carton of Kools, a case of Colt 45, a bottle of Thunderbird (extra long aged, at least 7 days), a Popeyes gift certificate and a bail bondsman’s card.
You’re not being racist enough. Try harder.
Trying hard is racist.
for the win
Just showing up is racist.
I guess someone has never heard Fluffy Iglesias’s tale of The Racist Gift Basket. Which did include a pack of Newports (though no bailbond card) as well as fried chicken, watermelon, Koolade, etc.
Someone? I had to google this. I am sure most people over the age of 25 never heard of this comic.
You forgot the watermelon
Out of season
Bro. Here in NC it’s Bojangles for the win. You would be surprised at the number of people getting their scratch offs and Newport singles or grape cigars who are stunned when I told them Brandon was about to ban them
Forgot Night Train.
If blacks make personal decisions that result in negative outcomes for themselves, it must be because of racist conspiracy, right? Why would BLM say something that wasn’t true?
Cannabis is medicine. Menthol cigs are racist. Leftie science. lol
We’ve all seem to have been magically transported to opposite world in the last decade or so. Speech is violence (if it’s CIS white people speaking). Actual violence is speech, often an expression of frustration, particularly if it’s black on white violence.
In the early 20th Century, the federal government understood that if it wanted to ban things like alcohol, it first had to amend the Constitution because that document ceded very little authority to the government to prohibit things created or sourced domestically from sale or use. For this reason, the Volstead Act came AFTER the 18th Amendment. But since then, the federal government has believed that it can ban anything it wants without first having to amend the Constitution and some presidents believe they can even do it without consent from Congress.
There are a lot of things that need to be fixed with the fedgov. But, I would argue this is one of the first things that needs to to be fixed.
Hear, hear!
Blame the 1920 Supreme Court, who ruled that it was perfectly legal for the executive branch to sign a treaty or agreement requiring them to exercise powers not originally delegated to the federal government. Missouri v. Holland legitimized a federal takeover of hunting laws for migratory birds. Before 1920, alcohol prohibition required a constitutional amendment. Afterwards, marijuana prohibition just required a signature on an international treaty.
The Bricker Amendment was written to close this loophole CREATED by the Supreme Court. The vast majority of elected swampies — including Republican Ike Eisenhower — militated against it and ensured it never saw the light of day.
For all the woke lefty obsession with rooting out the ‘patriarchy’ their policy preferences always seem to be about limiting choices for adults. IOW very paternalistic in effect, while they simultaneously want to eliminate negative consequences from nearly every aspect of life.
How about we simply let adults make their own choices about those things that only impact themselves while we also stop trying to shield them from consequences.
It’s a catch 22, their medical care secondary to smoking cost often millions of dollars they don’t have
We pay for it
Seems like a straightforward fix; restore sanity to insurance by having the premiums paid tied to the actual risk profile of the individual.
Someone who chooses to ride a motorcycle w/o a helmet to work smoke 2 packs of cigarettes and drink a pint of bourbon daily then go do extreme sports on the weekends and smoke hash on Sunday Eve to mellow out before they go to work on Monday should have much higher health and accident insurance premiums and a different set of deductibles than someone who’s biggest risk is riding a bus to the public library.
We used to have that differentiation in the insurance market not too long ago. Of course there’s probably no way to go back to that b/c the public has gotten used to the syndication from less risky/costly of the risky/costly. We could do it with some very direct govt subsidies for high risk corridors.
Cuts life expectancy which saves SS and medicare.
Hey GI… You give me Sa-Lem?
Actually, all tobacco products should be banned because of cancer.
Maybe let adults make their own decisions.
If that’s your stance, you should be calling for the ban of alcoholic beverages, as well. Alcohol’s death toll (directly and indirectly) isn’t insignificant.
Or, perhaps you can adopt a more rational stance, and, acknowledge that adults should be allowed to responsibly partake in adult pleasures, while weighing and accepting the health risks.
Don’t like ’em?
Don’t smoke ’em.
The big man heard that Omar be commin..
Good news. Now if they’d back off cigars I’d be happier.
The premium cigar industry won a significant court victory a few months ago, against the FDA, in which the court held that premium, hand-rolled cigars shouldn’t be treated the same as cheap, machine-made cigars, for regulatory purposes. I smoke five or so premium cigars a year, so, I was happy about that decision.
I guess the free crack pipes weren’t enough.
Who wants to smoke something that smells like a urinal cake?
When I was first reading about this a while back, someone pointed to studies which suggested that people who smoked menthol tended to smoke fewer cigarettes overall, thereby having less exposure to all the bad stuff. I’ve also heard plenty of anecdotes of people who swear by the flavored vapes as what finally helped them successfully quit smoking completely.
So it would seem that the ultimate goal is to do some combination of a) protecting the poor minority from him/herself because he/she is too stupid to know better, and b) keeping everyone who’s gotten hooked permanently hooked.
Democrats have a long history of buying votes with cigarettes. The way Biden’s numbers are tanking among blacks, I guess everything old is new again.